


bathe me up in light, call me when you drown

by janie_tangerine



Series: the jaimebrienne spite countdown to season eight [19]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Amputation, Bathing/Washing, Bodily Fluids In A Not Sexual Intended Manner, Book 3: A Storm of Swords, Brienne Isn't Having A Great Time Either, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, During Canon, F/M, Gen, Harrenhal, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Jaime Lannister Is Also Having The Worst Time Of His Life, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Brienne of Tarth, Protectiveness, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Vomiting, don't expect them to kiss this is canon compliant but XD, jaime & brienne's road trip of doom from HER pov: a delight, the bloody mummers are the worst dot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 04:24:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18358568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “Jaime,” she whispers. “Jaime, what are you doing?”“Dying,” he whispers back.What — is he — oh, no. This has gone way beyond her oath now. Fine, she swore she’d keep him alive, but after what she saw this morning… he does have some of that fire in him left. And he does want to get out of this. And he doesn’t deserve such an undignified death. Not a swordsman like that, not a man who could fight like that, not a man whose eyes were so bright even when chained inside a dirty dungeon. Not a man who had the guts to try and steal that sword.“No,” Brienne urges him, “no, you must live.”“Stop telling me what do, wench. I’ll die if it pleases me.” He sounds like he’s done for, and like he has lost everything he had going for him, and gods, she gets it, she gets it, but — no. She can’t let him give up. She won’t. She never would have gone anywhere if she let that feeling get to her and he’s certainly not done for, handless or not.Or: ASOS, Jaime IV and V, from Brienne's POV.





	bathe me up in light, call me when you drown

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAND welcome everyone again to the spitefic train which today also doubles for Jaime week day five, favorite book or season - which is asos/S3 even if this isn't show-based, and which allows me to go into one of my personal favorite hot takes of the list.
> 
> Today's double brand of hot take directly from 2014/2015 is, in all its... well, I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO CALL IT, but:
> 
> and
> 
>   
>    
> Wow, I didn't know that seeing someone's body fluids which everyone happens to emit meant you can't possibly fall in love with them, but anyway: have my best shot at rewriting Jaime IV and V from Brienne's pov, sticking to canon, trying to follow it as closely as possible, not going out of my way to do the whole rose-tinted glasses shipping thing going on and trying to show anon *how* exactly I think it might have happened even while she was busy in the aforementioned cleaning shit up business.
> 
> Goes unsaid: this entire thing is 100% canon-compliant _including_ the worst parts of it, the only dialogue I made up was for the scenes that Jaime couldn't have possibly witnessed while being passed out, you've read the book/seen the show, you know what to expect.
> 
> Also: I own nothing and the title is from the Horrible Crowes, and see you tomorrow with something WAY less angsty than this. /o\

 

I

 

It takes a day before she hears him praying under his breath.

It’s barely audible, and how could it _not_ be, when they’re riding next to each other, tied to their horses — or better, _she_ is, he isn’t, but the Mummers figured it would be useless in his condition.

Brienne hadn’t taken Jaime Lannister for a praying man, but she’s fairly sure he _did_ mention the Mother. Not the Warrior, but she can imagine why.

She looks at the hand bound around his neck, not even wanting to know how _badly_ it must smell — she can feel some from here, but it’s right under his nose and he can barely keep his head up, for that matter. Hells, he has barely opened his eyes since they cut the hand off, and if one week ago someone had told her that she’d be hoping to see that emerald, clear green just to make sure he’s not dead yet, she’d have laughed.

Too bad that there’s nothing to laugh about here.

She glances at the swell of his stump and feels her stomach turn into a knot. Whatever this man was, whatever this man _is_ to her, never mind that _she swore a vow_ to see him safely to King’s Landing, seeing what they did to him, what they _took_ from him when in that one fight they had she had barely managed to keep him at bay when he was chained and weakened and certainly not at his prime, makes her chest feel constricted. She _knows_ what losing a sword hand might mean. She imagines losing _hers_ for one moment, and she wants to feel sick at once. She’s barely hearing the Mummers’s taunts behind and around them, and she swallows down a lump of saliva that tastes like bile and vomit, and glances at Lannister again.

His face is wet, she notices, and —

Gods. She had thought such a man incapable of crying, she _had_ , given what she had known of him and how he had behaved and how _foul_ and vile he seemed to be, regardless of how handsome he might have looked — and now he _is_ , and he did make their captors angry regardless when he lied about Tarth, hadn’t he? He _did_ speak up to spare her being violated, when _he didn’t have to_ and when she had thought he would care naught, or he might have actually wished for it, since it _would_ put her out of his way and he has only wanted to be rid of her until now, hasn’t he?

And instead —

Instead he spoke up, _for her_. And now his face is wet with tears, contorted in a grimace of pain, and Brienne feels a nonsensical need to reach out and comfort him, which she cannot do, not with her bound hands.

He lets out half-broken sobs for a few minutes… that is, until one of the Mummers notices and starts taunting him about it, and then she hears him hiss and forcing himself to stop, his eye that’s not swollen shut opening and turning a cold shade of green as he tries to make his face show no emotion. It’s not working too well, she thinks, especially because his forehead is clammy and his skin is reddened and he’s obviously running a fever.

The Mummers keep on laughing. He says nothing nor prays anymore.

For that matter, he’s barely been conscious until now, and before they merely tied him to the horse like a damned sack of potatoes, and they haven’t let her check on him or anything of the kind — and given how they look at her, she’s halfway sure that it won’t be long before they forget about her father’s supposed sapphire reserves.

 _Let them try_ , she thinks grimly.

Anyway, he’s been barely conscious for a day? Two?, even if it’s been longer since he lost the hand. He also hasn’t managed to eat much — they did shove something in his throat, the horses’s food, most likely, or given him water to drink, but that’s about it.

For a moment she thinks, _if only they let me do it, at least I could make sure he did eat_.

She doesn’t know where it came from — her vow, or the fact that _no one_ deserves such a treatment, or the fact that she can’t help thinking, _and what if they took_ my _sword hand instead_?

Still, she doesn’t dare ask — she has a feeling it would only make things worse and she needs to make them think she’s not going to create trouble if she wants half a chance in the seven hells of fooling them if she has to fight them off. She tries her bounds — useless. They’re too tight. Maybe with enough strength she _might_ break them off, but it would require too much effort. She resolves on thinking about it while they march on.

She glances at her right. Lannister is still trying to keep on a straight face even if he’s grimacing all over. For a moment she sincerely admires him for trying.

Then he makes a pained sound, and a moment later all of them smell a different kind of stench — or maybe, it comes back to the surface, most likely.

Lannister’s face turns mortified for a moment.

Of course, Brienne thinks, when he was unconscious they mainly shoved liquids into his mouth, and that disgusting horse food they give the both of them is also not exactly solid when it comes to _his_ ration, but — it had to happen at some point.

Of course, _all_ of the Mummers start laughing at once. Brienne tries to not even pay attention to whatever they have to say, there’s _nothing_ funny about this and she wishes they _wouldn’t_ do this, no one deserves this kind of public humiliation on top of being maimed, but then —

“Rorge,” Urswyck says, “it’s all well and good, but I’ve got to ride next to him. Not like he smells good in general, but like _that_? No bloody way.”

“Yeah,” Timeon adds, or so Brienne thinks the name is, “I’m not riding smelling his shit all the way to Harrenhal.”

“Well, I ain’t cleaning it,” Rorge says, with a grimace of disgust — and then he looks at _her_.

He goes to tell Hoat something, the man thinks about it and nods, stopping all the horses, and then Rorge comes back to her.

“ _My lady_ ,” he sneers, “you said _your_ job was keeping him alive?”

“I swore that oath, yes,” she answers, looking at him in the eyes. He seems to hate that she’s still taller than him even if they’re on a horse.

“Then I’m sure you’ll take care of it, won’t you? I mean, one would think you’d be doing that for your whelps if you knew what’s good for you —”

Brienne isn’t going to hear any of _that_ nonsense. “Yes,” she interrupts him.

He raises an eyebrow. “Why, so eager to do it?”

“Not really,” she admits, “but _someone_ has to and I swore that vow. If you would free my hands and let me near the river, I will do it.”

“Fair enough. Urswyck, leave him there,” he says, and then forces her down from the horse and drags her to where Urswyck has pretty much thrown Lannister from the saddle and into the riverbank. The moment she glances at his breeches, she knows they’re a lost cause and so must be his smallclothes — no one’s changed them until this point and he might have only drank liquids up until now, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t filthy.

She doesn’t want to push her luck, but she also can’t just dress him with what he’s wearing if the point is that he should survive this entire blasted situation.

“Well, you want him alive, don’t you?” She asks as Rorge unties her hands. She could try to steal his sword, but there’s no point right now. She’d never win against all of them when they’re on alert.

“Of courth,” Hoat slurs.

“Then I will need new smallclothes and new breeches. I can’t certainly let _that_ wash now and dry it, unless you want to lose hours.”

Rorge tries to protest, but Hoat stops him. “Thee hath the right of it,” he admits. “Find her thomething.”

She clears her throat. “I had another pair of breeches in my pack. It should fit him, at least.”

“Hm, good enough,” Rorge compromises.

She kneels down next to Lannister, hoping that maybe she can take the chance to _tell_ him something, but his eyes are closed again and maybe it’s better if they are, and he’s taking hard breaths and his face is covered in cold sweat. No way he’s going to even hear her. She puts a hand on his forehead, feeling for the fever, and her stomach turns upside down again as he leans into it, but before she can try to comfort him some more, for what she can, Rorge shows up again with her old pair of breeches and —

Gods, not smallclothes, but a piece of cloth same as what she uses for her moon blood, just larger.

“Well,” he says, “that’s going to be easier when you have to do it again now, right? Come on, be quick with it.”

She’s sure that Lannister would never want her or anyone to witness this, but fair enough. She’s going to try and make this as quick as possible. Good thing he’s passed out, or as close to it as it gets.

She lifts his hips gently, pulling away the dirty, piss-soaked breeches, trying to not wrinkle her nose too much at the smell — hells, how could they leave him _days_ in these clothes? —, then she does the same with the smallclothes, realizing that there is no way she won’t get her hands dirty with shit regardless, so she might as well just let it happen already and end it there. She throws them to the side over the breeches, then moves him into the water of the river up until the waist — most of the dirt goes away with, and she wipes away the rest with her fingers in lack of better options. She hoists him back up as quickly as possible, holding up his dead weight, barely even looking below his waist if not for the necessary time because she knows he would hate it, then ties the thankfully clean cloth around his waist and puts her old breeches on him. They’re loose, but if she ties them tight enough they shouldn’t fall.

“I’m bringing him back to the horse,” she says before anyone else can do it — at least she’s not going to throw him on it unceremoniously. He’s barely conscious as she does it and wraps his left hand around the reins.

A moment later, Rorge is back to tie her hands again. “Amusing scene,” he says, “I imagine we’ll get tired of it soon enough.”

Brienne says nothing and mounts on her horse again.

She swore a damned vow and she’s failed up until now.

If she can only hope to keep it by cleaning his shit up for now, _fine_. As if she hasn’t had to eat the metaphorical kind of for years, and as if she’d want _any_ of them to do it in her place. At least if it’s her she’s not going to make it worse for him, and whatever else the man has done, he doesn’t deserve that humiliation. Not at all.

 

II.

 

The hand smells foul.

They _both_ smell foul, Brienne knows, but the stench of that damned hand will be in her nightmares until she lives, _if_ she lives, because right now her chances look no better than Lannister’s, not counting that he _might_ die of infection.

Before, when they were tied back to back, she could only feel his warmth and could only barely smell the decay — but now that he’s tied in front of her, _that close_ , closer than she’s ever been to any man, period

( _isn’t_ this _ironic, too?_ )

she can smell the rotting, putrefying thing even too well, and she knows that so can he.

It hits her breasts with every jump of the horse. Sure as the gods’s will, the few times she had dared imagine Renly’s hands touching her meager excuse for a bosom, she could have never thought _this_ would be how a man’s hand would touch her _there_ for the first time, but she can’t even feel remorseful about it — part of this is her fault, and surely Lannister had little to no input in that decision. His right eye is inflamed and swollen shut and she itches to do _something_ about it but she can’t, not with her bound hands. The only thing she can do is let him lie against her as he obviously loses consciousness.

“The lovers,” she hears that wretched Shagwell say. She consoles herself knowing that he most likely _hasn’t_ just read her mind. “And what a lovely sight they are. ’Twould be cruel to separate the good knight and his lady.” Brienne flinches at hearing that, and moreso when he laughs in that insufferable, shrilly way.

“Ah, but which one is the knight and which one is the lady?”

 _Surely I’m not the bloody lady_ , she thinks, _and even with all his shortcomings, he most likely is a better knight than the whole lot of you_.

He makes a pained noise as the horse takes another step. If only they’d let them ride back to front, maybe she could hold him up and make it somehow better, but as it is, it’s not going to happen. Gods, it’s not even that if he dies her oath is worth nothing and she’ll have failed — at this point it’s basic decency. It’s bad enough that he lost the hand, but this humiliation is killing _her_ and surely it’s worse for him. She wishes she could tell him something, _anything_ , but she never was good with words and he most likely doesn’t want any from _her_.

She says nothing and endures the ride, wondering when in the seven hells are they going to give him at least some more water — he hasn’t drank any since the morning and if they don’t want him to die because of that infection around his right wrist, he can’t go on with so little of it, especially when now that he’s awake he doesn’t even eat because it hurts too much. Not that bringing it up helped any — she _did_ try, when he was unconscious, before, and Urswyck flat-out told her that the less he drank and ate, the less work for her it was and the least stops for them.

She had been about to tell him that she cared none for _having less work_ and that once you’ve seen a man’s waste it doesn’t matter how many other times it happens, but she realized it was hopeless, same as telling them that it doesn’t work like _that_.

Brienne glances down at Lannister’s cracked lips, at his short, barely-grown hair.

 _I’m sorry_ , she thinks and doesn’t say.

 

III.

 

When, two days later, they give him to drink bloody _horse piss_ out of anything, she wants to scream, _do you want him to die_?

Too bad that they wouldn’t hear her. But — gods, he’s not eating, they’re giving him _wine_ instead of water when they care to, he’s barely even alive, that infection hasn’t gone down a bit, and they’re giving him _that_ to drink? She watches him down it anyway after they tell him what it is, his hands shaking as he kneels on the ground before he retches it up at once, all over his filthy beard and breeches.

“I think,” Rorge says, disgusted, “that our resident _beauty_ here has one more job. Get that out of him,” he says, untying her after she gets off the horse. She thinks for a moment that she should try to steal his sword and gut him right there and then, but — the other ones are too near Lannister. It’s too risky. And she can see that he’s more unwell than usual — no. _No_ , not now.

She glares at Rorge. “I will need to bring him to the river.”

“As you please,” he laughs. “Just don’t get out of my sight. Oh, and I think his beard isn’t the only thing you have to wash.”

Of course it’s not — she smells shit and urine the moment she gets close to him, but of course it would happen. She’d have been surprised if it hadn’t, not with what he has just tried to drink. She lifts him up as gently as she can, his arm around her shoulders, realizing that it’s the first time this happens when he’s actually more or less fully conscious — gods, she wants to try and make it as painless as possible, but what does she know?

She brings him to the riverbank as slow as she can get away with, making him kneel gently on the ground. She _should_ wash his beard, it’s filthy, but —

She reaches down inside the river, cups a handful of water in her hand. “Drink it,” she whispers, not daring speak any louder. His left eye, the one that’s not half-swollen shut, blinks in her direction, that green still looking too dull for her tastes, but then he parts his lips and she lets it slide inside his mouth. She reaches down again another couple of times, figuring it’s the most she can get away with, and then she _really_ starts on washing the godsforsaken vomit off his beard — of course half of it is, well, horse piss, what does it have to be, but she gets most of it off at once and then cards her fingers through the beard’s brittle stains until it’s clean. She _could_ probably get away with another handful of water, but given that her hands most likely will taste of horse piss it’s not a good idea if she doesn’t want him to retch again.

She lays him back down on the ground, unlacing his breeches. At _that_ he realizes what she’s about to do and he grimaces all over again, but she merely shakes her head as the Mummers taunt them and tell her to be faster already. She says nothing and strips him of both breeches and dirty cloth. First she gives both of them a perfunctory wash in the river, watching the water take away half of the brown stains but of course not _all_ — some stuck, but given what he’s given to drink and the fact that she has to do this at least twice each day and can’t certainly wash the laundry properly, it will have to do. Then while they dry some, she lowers him inside the river again — rinse and repeat, indeed —, makes sure he’s as clean as it gets, dresses him back inside both damp pieces of clothing.

She tries to be as quick as she can, but maybe she does try to be as gentle as possible as she does it, and when she lifts him up again as the Mummers cry for her to just put him back on the damned horse, she tries to squeeze his shoulder as she does. Most likely he doesn’t understand it, but when he looks at her with the eyes of a man who feels thoroughly embarrassed that she had to see it — she shakes her head, gives him a nod and helps him on the horse as gently as she can regardless of how much the others scream at her to get a move on.

She’ll get a move on when she pleases, she decides, and when she has to rinse and repeat at sundown, she’s honestly glad that Lannister has passed out again.

It’s a lot easier to do if he’s not looking up at her and she’s not feeling the entire weight of her failures on her shoulders.

 

IV.

 

It’s maybe more than ironic that she has _not_ tried to take any of these bandits by surprise yet because she hadn’t thought the odds were worth it, but that _he_ tries to do it, and when he steals Timeon’s sword and actually manages to do it, as much as she wishes she didn’t, she feels a pang of profound admiration rise through her chest as he tries to raise it up.

Here he is, without his good hand, with a fever still wrecking him, having not eaten in days and having thrown up half of what he drank, needing _her_ to change his damned smallclothes and clean him up, and he still has it in him to try and fight to the death just as long as he can hold that sword? She doesn’t want to admire him, but she _does_ , and she just wishes he hadn’t done it when she had her hands bound and could do nothing, because _this_ is not going to work, it won’t, and the moment Shagwell shows up and jumps in front of him as Lannister tries to hit him — and fails — and everyone else laughs, she feels like crying. Gods, such a magnificent warrior, reduced to _this_? Who does Shagwell think he is anyway?

The more it goes on, the more she wants to close her eyes or look away because of how painful it feels, and she doesn’t even want to know how it must feel for someone who was the best in the entire realm up until they took it from him, so she keeps her eyes open because she feels like she owes it to him somehow, until he trips over a rock and ends up on his knees again —

And Shagwell laughs as he comes closer and _kisses his head_ , and — she can see the revulsed grimace in Lannister’s eyes and _she_ can feel it rising in her throat and her stomach. And it’s a bloody irrational thought that makes no sense, but she hates that she hasn’t even managed to bring him a modicum of comfort because her hands aren’t free at any point ever and she can’t bring herself to talk to him and she can’t even check for his fever if not when she’s changing his smallchothes (and she always tries to be as fast as possible when she does because she knows how much he must hate it)… and that little monster with no respect or decency gets to do whatever he wants with a man who’s _her_ charge first and foremost?

But gods, the look of naked fear he saw in Lannister’s eyes for that split moment about undoes her, and she breathes in relief when Rorge finally kicks that sword away from Lannister’s fingers and puts an end to that forsaken pitiful show.

When Hoath tells him that if he tries it again, he’ll take a hand or a foot, she can see it last a lot, lot longer.

She swallows down some more bile and does nothing and stays silent.

 _But I’m watching_ , she thinks. _I’m watching, and you’re all underestimating me, but you will regret it one day._

Or so she tells herself.

——

Later that night, he’s lying down on the ground and staring up at the sky like a man who can’t even find it in himself to move — when she cleaned him up earlier, he didn’t even stir nor tried to move. Before, he _did_ help her out somehow.

Now he doesn’t.

She doesn’t like the way he’s looking right now. He has the eyes of a dead man, and — that’s not what she saw, when she fought him, nor in Riverrun. She saw a man who wanted to live, who wanted to get a rise out of her and Lady Catelyn, who might have been the worst oathbreaker but had a _spark_ inside him, of what exactly she couldn’t say, and now that green is everything but alive or bright or clear as it used to be, and —

She doesn’t know what possesses her to use his name for the first time. But she needs him to pay attention to her and she needs the others to not hear her.

“Jaime,” she whispers. “Jaime, what are you doing?”

“Dying,” he whispers back.

 _What_ — is he — oh, _no_. This has gone way beyond her oath now. Fine, she swore she’d keep him alive, but after what she saw this morning… he _does_ have some of that fire in him left. And he _does_ want to get out of this. And he doesn’t deserve such an undignified death. Not a swordsman like that, not a man who could fight like that, not a man whose eyes were so _bright_ even when chained inside a dirty dungeon. Not a man who had the guts to try and steal that sword.

“No,” Brienne urges him, “no, you must live.”

“Stop telling me what do, wench. I’ll die if it pleases me.” He sounds like he’s _done_ for, and like he has lost everything he had going for him, and gods, she gets it, she gets it, but — no. She can’t let him give up. She _won’t._ She never would have gone anywhere if she let that feeling get to her and he’s certainly _not_ done for, handless or not.

No. She needs to find a way to rouse him. What would he hate being called most? Certainly not _kingslayer_ , she thinks. He must be adjusted to that. But, well, loathsome as he is… there’s _one_ thing no one ever said of him, as far as she knows. That’s for sure. She speaks again.

“Are you so craven?” She asks, looking at him, and his eyes go wide in surprise, as if he can’t fathom she called him like _that._ His lips part, and she can notice how thinner his face looks even if regardless of everything, he’s still _somewhat_ handsome under that moonlight.

“What else can I do, but die?” He spits back, as if he really can’t conceive anything else. Fair. Maybe he thinks he’s done for without that hand. But then again, people would have thought her done for long before she took a sword in hers. And oh, she _had_ felt like dying at Ronnet’s rejection, and when finding out those people in Renly’s camp had courted her because of a _bet_ —

But what had she told herself, when she understood? She had said, _they aren’t worth it. One day you’ll have the best of them, if you work for it_.

“Live,” she tells him, forgetting to keep her voice low, “live, and fight, and take revenge.” She was about to say more, but then she hears Rorge cursing — oh, _hells_ , he heard her — and he comes over, and he kicks her straight in the gut.

“You will hold your bloody tongue if you want to keep it, bitch,” he shouts in her face, “or do you want it around your neck like his hand?”

She doesn’t answer and tries to keep her noises down to moans and grunts as he kicks her again, and _again_ , as she wishes she had a damned sword or that her hands weren’t bound or that he were closer so that she could knock off some of those bloody teeth of his with her head.

He doesn’t.

By the time he leaves, she’s feeling like her entire midsection is a bruise, but when she dares glancing at her side, Lannister has his eyes closed even if he’s obviously awake and he’s — probably thinking about what she said.

Good.

If he _doesn’t_ let himself die, then she’s glad she took those damned kicks.

When the next morning he forces himself to eat some of that horse food they offer him, and he doesn’t throw it up, and when he does it again, and again the day after, she feels relieved down to her guts.

At least he’s trying.

And if it means that she has to smell his rotting hand while he tries to sleep in the saddle, fine. She’s had worse. She keeps her mouth shut, says nothing and keeps her eyes open.

If they think they’ll have the best of her, they’re wrong.

 

V.

 

She doesn’t know what it is about Harrenhal that rouses him _somehow_. All she knows is that Urswyck said that it’s where they were heading, and _of course_ it was, she hadn’t imagined they’d be going anywhere else.

And then Lannister lets out a loud, _dark_ laugh that no one was expecting, and for a moment he thinks he’s gone mad, and then she can’t even scream _no_ as Timeon comes up to him with a whip and hits him in the face with it — _leave him,_ she wants to scream, _haven’t you maimed him enough_ , but Lannister seems to barely feel it. He still chuckles under his breath.

 _He might have gone mad for real_ , she thinks, and she doesn’t dare voice that thought until late in the evening, when she can’t stop herself from whispering and asking him what is ailing him, even if she knows she shouldn’t.

“Harrenhal was where they gave me the white cloak,” he whispers, in a faraway voice that gives her the creeps. “Whent’s great tourney. He wanted to show us all his big castle and his fine sons. I wanted to show them too.” He almost sounds proud, for a moment. “I was only fifteen, but no one could have beaten me that day. Aerys never let me joust.” And that — he laughs again and she wants to say _no, no, don’t, stop, they’ll come for you again_ , but — what hits her is how _young_ he had sounded until he said no one could have beaten him on that day and how _bitter_ his voice turned just when he mentioned the Mad King. _He never let him joust?_ “He sent me away. But now I’m coming back.” He sounds almost ominous now, and a moment later Rorge comes back, and of course he heard him laughing, he did it again, loud and bitter and not amused at all, and it’s all she can do to see Rorge kick him and punch him all over, but his green eyes look faraway, as if he’s barely even there —

She almost screams when Rorge kicks him in the stump and then he passes out at once.

 _Gods,_ Brienne thinks, _they’ll kill him. They’ll kill him and it’ll be my fault._

Lannister _doesn’t_ wake up when a couple hours later Rorge unbinds her from the tree because everyone smelled that he’s soiled himself again and they’re not going to bear it for the entire night. They barely pay attention to them when she brings him to the river, even if they do keep an eye on her — all right then. She doesn’t want to risk too much, but he’s also not waking up anytime soon, so he won’t know if she deviates from the usual routine a little. She washes his clothes and cleans him up as usual, but as she leaves breeches and cloth on the riverbank for a moment, she reaches into the river when the current has brought away the dirty water and carefully washes blood from the slash on his face that Timeon had made — at least it’s shallow and it won’t scar. She cleans it up as much as she can, satisfied that it barely bleeds now, then she dresses him again, and she _would_ have dared doing something as nonsensical as running her fingers along his brow or _anything_ , but at that point Rorge notices that she’s done and tells her to bring him back already.

“I’m sorry,” she mouths, barely audible, and then she lifts him up gently and brings him back to camp.

If he goes mad from this, she’ll just have herself to blame, and honestly? She couldn’t fault him.

They tie them back to their former tree trunks.

But that night she can’t sleep thinking about how he sounded before, so open and _young_ and like he was about to break in tears as he said, _Aerys never let me joust_.

It was nothing she expected from such a man. Not ever. Not from what she knows.

And yet —

For the first time, she thinks, _might it be that there’s something he never told_?

She doesn’t know.

She most likely never will.

She _really_ doubts that he would say such a thing to _her_ of all people, anyway, especially if _no one else_ knows.

 

VI.

 

The next day passes as usual.

But the night —

Brienne is _no_ fool, regardless of what other people might assume.

Or better, she’s no fool in _this_ sense.

When Rorge and Zollo start arguing about _who is going to go first_ , she knows what they mean to do.

When Shagwell says, “Why don’t you both go first? One in the front and one in the back?”, she _knows_ it’s her they’re talking about. For a moment she thinks they actually _will_ do it… until they start arguing about who’d take which side.

Well then.

Brienne had known that it was a risk, when she set from Tarth. She had always known that deep down. She also had presumed, foolishly, that no one would ever catch her without a weapon and that she could always defend herself, if anyone tried to rape her.

She obviously had miscalculated. She has no expectations of getting out of it, and at this point she _almost_ wishes Randyll Tarly never found out about that wager in Renly’s camp — if she had lost her maidenhead to bloody Ser Hyle, she’d have suffered knowing _why_ , but at least it wouldn’t have been for these two beasts to take _and_ it wouldn’t have been even more painful than her septa always told her it would be.

But there’s no point crying over it now. She has made mistakes during this journey and now it seems that she shall pay for them in spades…

But she’s _not_ going to let them have it easy, she decides. The moment they come close enough, she’s going to bite, and if she can’t, she’s going to kick, and if not, well, she’ll fight them every damned inch of the way. If Lannister could take everything he took until now, _well_ , she can handle those two.

And _then_ Lannister speaks under their curses.

“Wench,” he urges, and now he sounds — serious. _Entirely_ serious. His eyes are bright green in a way that makes her think of the way he looked at Lady Catelyn when he told her there were no men like him in Riverrun’s dungeons, and — _what does he care_? “Let them have their meat, and you go far away,” he keeps on. “It will be over quicker, and they’ll get less pleasure from it.”

 _What?_ Is he telling her to lie back and take it and think about something else while they do it? What does he care? Why would he?

“They’ll get no pleasure from what I’ll give them,” she answers, because she doesn’t intend to give them even an ounce of satisfaction. No. _She won’t_.

He hisses under his breath, shaking his head, as if he’s troubled by that response. Extremely troubled. But _why does he even care?_ He shouldn’t. Hells, if she had just been able to do her job properly he would have a hand still, wouldn’t he?

He shakes his head again. “Let them do it, and go away inside.” He keeps on, and she’d really like to know what he even bloody means with _going away inside._ It sounds like nothing good and nothing she particularly wants to do. “Think of Renly, if you loved him. Think of Tarth, mountains and seas, pools, waterfalls, whatever you have on your Sapphire Isle, think…” He whispers, _urgently_ , a kind of fevered look to his eyes, and he doesn’t sound like he’s taunting her when he tells her to think of Renly. As if Renly ever would have wanted her _that_ way, she thinks sadly, but then he says nothing more because Rorge has apparently won that exchange and he’s going to take her from the front.

Gods, too bad he doesn’t have a nose already, because if he didn’t she’d have taken great joy in breaking it with her own head.

“You’re the ugliest woman I ever seen,” Rorge says, and she wants to spit back, _tell me something no one else has ever told me countless times._ She says nothing. “But don’t think I can’t make you uglier. You want a nose like mine? Fight me, and you’ll get one.” _Well, it’s been broken thrice already. As if I care._ “And two eyes, that’s too many. One scream out o’ you, and I’ll pop one out and make you eat it, and then I’ll pull your fucking teeth out one by one.” Brienne had not intended to scream _at all_ , more like making _him_ scream as soon as she could, even if for a moment she does think _not my eyes, they’re the only part of me other people seem to not think ugly_ , but then she silences that stupid, whiny voice that never did good to her, and braces herself.

Fine. It’s going to happen. They’ll have to fight for it.

“Oh, do it, Rorge,” Shagwell pleads, and Brienne is so disgusted by that voice, for a moment she thinks, _if only my hands were unbound you’d be screaming for mercy._ “Without her teeth, she’ll look just like my dear old mother, and I always wanted to fuck my dear old mother up the arse.”

 _At least I won’t have to look at him by the time it’s his turn_ , Brienne tells herself.

But then she hears Lannister take in a deep breath, and then he laughs, slightly, and she wants to ask _what are you doing_ —

“There’s a funny fool,” he says. “I have a riddle for you, Shagwell. Why do you care if she screams? Oh, wait, I know.”

 _No, no, no,_ you _are a fool, what are you doing, he’s going to kill you_ —

“ _Sapphires_ ,” he shouts, _loud_ , loud enough that the rest of the camp would hear, and a moment later Rorge curses all over and kicks him in the stump, _again_ , and the sound he makes —

Brienne has never heard a louder scream in her entire life. Nor such a pained one. Two kicks in a still infected wound would be enough for most men, but not for _him_ , and he just —

He just asked for another because he tried to help _her_ , when she never — oh gods, she wants to cry, she wants to go to him and put herself in between him and these beasts and dare them from touching him again before she rips them apart with her bare hands, and no one else, _no one_ , has ever — has ever done such a thing for her in her entire life, and she can barely notice what’s happening around them until he’s woken up and she hears Hoat screaming at the both of them that she has to be a maid or no one will give them that bag of _thappireth,_ of course, and then he leaves guards on them just before Jaime passes out.

Brienne doesn’t sleep that night.

——

It takes her two days to find the guts to ask.

Two days she spends barely even hearing what happens, merely glaring at Rorge every time he unbounds her before she drags him to the river and cleans him up, as usual, rinse and repeat, by now she can barely feel the smell of shit for how much it’s ingrained inside her nose, and she can’t bring herself to not use his name when thinking about him by now. She hadn’t thought he would —

But he actually gave her advice that most likely was _good_ advice to him, regardless of how much she could never follow up on it, and he took another kick in a stump he has _also thanks to her carelessness_ just to save her from being raped by those three who all have in turn being horrible to _him_ in the most foul ways, and — as much as she always thought him an oathbreaker and despised him when they met, she can’t deny to herself that he did something _no one else_ ever might have done for her.

And this when he can’t even fight, when he can’t even stand long enough to actually relieve himself in the woods yet, when he’s lost his _sword hand —_ he still found it in himself to put himself at risk for _her_ out of everyone. Someone whose maidenhead no one has ever thought halfway valuable, not when betting on it seemed acceptable to half of Renly’s camp, unless it meant gaining her island. Someone whose maidenhead no one thought worth courting her for if not for money, and he still spoke up and saved her from losing it to those monsters that he most likely fears more than _she_ does.

She can’t stop thinking about it. She just _can’t_.

It takes her two damned days to find the guts to whisper in his direction when she’s sure Rorge won’t hear.

“Jaime?” She doesn’t care that she’s using his name by now. She can’t call him _kingslayer._ Not after this. He deserves at least that respect. “Why did you shout out?”

“Why did I should _sapphires_ , you mean?” He snorts. “Use your wits, wench. Would this lot have cared if I shouted, _rape_?”

She flinches. She takes a deep breath, knowing that he’s right. Still — “You did not need to shout at all,” she says quietly. She’d have handled them. No one else has cared this much until now. He didn’t have to. He didn’t _need_ to. She’s learned to be her own defender, after all. She could have handled this. She could have —

“You’re hard enough to look at _with_ a nose. Besides, I wanted to make the goat say _thapphireth_ ,” he snorts, and for a moment she’s thankful he’s regained enough of _his_ wits that he’s making horrible jokes about this even if she wishes she’d just answer straight. He breathes out. “A good thing for you I’m such a liar. An honorable man would have told the truth about the Sapphire Isle.”

She flinches. She doesn’t want to admit he’s right, but he _is_ , and she most likely misjudged him, and she needs to think about it more later, but —

But if there’s _something_ she has to do, is being straight with him in return, if he won’t be with her. “All the same, I thank you, ser,” she says, and she _does_ notice how his eyes go slightly wide as he obviously notices that it’s the first time she _did_ call him like that.

But he is a knight, and he’s behaved better than most she’s run into and how proper knights should two days ago, and she will acknowledge it if it kills her.

He grinds his teeth moment later. “A Lannister pays his debts. That was for the river, and those rocks you dropped on Robin Ryger.”

Brienne can hear that it’s not the entire story and that he’s most likely lying.

She says nothing else, not wanting to risk anyone noticing that they’re talking.

But she doubts it was to pay a debt. The rocks weren’t warranting of such a payback.

 _I think I have a debt to you, too_ , she doesn’t tell him, as much as she doesn’t want to admit it.

But fine enough. She’ll keep her eyes open in Harrenhal. And meanwhile, she’ll keep on thinking about how he _didn’t have to_ , not at all —

And he still did.

_And he still did._

 

VII

 

Brienne doesn’t think she would trust Roose Bolton as far as she can throw him, _but_ for now she will just have to content herself with doing what he tells them to. _He_ has the command of the castle, after all. That said, no one has tried to do anything to her yet, even if people glance at her suspiciously, and she wishes she knew where they brought Jaime Lannister already — she saw him go with that maester, but the man hardly looked trustworthy and given that he was only slightly stronger than usual when they got to Harrenhal, she’d just — have rather been there and overseeing whatever ministrations the maester would give him. He’s still her charge, after all.

Then again, she tried asking once and she was told that the Kingslayer was being tended to, and that was it. And after what seems like hours spent in the room they gave her, she can’t bear her own smell anymore, never mind that she was told they would have to dine with Bolton later, and she certainly can’t show up like _this_. She shakes her head and opens the door, finding a guard outside.

“I wish to bathe,” she says straight. “Is it possible, or does Lord Bolton wish to smell exactly how much I couldn’t wash on the road?”

The guard makes a disgusted face. “I doubt it,” he agrees. “Very well. There’s a bathhouse in the castle, you can go there to your leisure. Someone will fetch you and bring you proper garb.”

“My thanks, ser,” she tells him, figuring that being polite won’t hurt. The man scoffs and gives her direction to the bathhouse in question and Brienne immediately heads there. A maid shows up with clean garb for her and won’t leave even if Brienne tells her there’s no need, so she reluctantly accepts it. At least she doesn’t try to talk to her.

Brienne tells the guard stationed outside what’s her business, she’s let in and finds herself in front of a large number of stone tubs, all large enough to fit four people, the maid still standing in the corner. The ceiling is low enough that she almost hits her head on it as she goes in, but it’s not uncomfortable. Good. She breathes in the steam coming from the hot water, her eyes burning for a moment, but then she feels like her skin is going to burn if she doesn’t get inside and finally wash away the weeks of her travels with the Mummers. She quickly takes off her boots and dirty, ruined clothes and smallclothes, throwing them to the side, grabs a brush and a piece of soap from a set placed on the ground and immediately dives inside the first tub.

She moans out loud the moment the hot water finally touches her flesh — she’s not surprised to see the water turning dark the moment she lowers herself inside, but she expected nothing less. For a moment, she lets herself enjoy the feeling of _finally_ being warm and not surrounded by dirt, then she takes a deep breath and sees to start cleaning herself properly. First she brushes her hands clean with as much force as she can muster — she knows it’s irrational that she keeps on seeing dirt, shit and waste under her finger for a long while even after she’s pretty much run her nails through the bar thrice, but she isn’t satisfied until at least _they_ are spark clean. Then she proceeds on washing her hair, looking in disgust at how grimy the water turns around her the longer she goes at it.

At some point it’s so grimy she can barely see through it, so she grabs both soap and brush and moves in the next tub over, taking a chance to soap up her legs and chest before diving in. The water becomes _less_ grimy now, thankfully, and as she sits against the stone of the tub and starts brushing at her arm, she wonders, _would I be washing worse wounds if Jaime Lannister hadn’t lied for me_ , and at that point an anger she hadn’t remembered feeling in months takes hold of her. She got it all _wrong_ , she mucked the mission up, she got them both captured or at least she didn’t make sure they _wouldn’t_ , and the only reason she’s not washing blood off the inside of her legs, too, is that a man who _murdered his king_ and spat on every oath he ever swore and flung a child from a window and bedded his sister got a kick in his maimed arm for her, when _no one else_ ever did such a thing for her, when she learned soon enough that she’d have to defend herself or perish if she wanted to be a knight or if she wanted _anything_ in her life.

She had _one_ job. Bringing him to King’s Landing alive. And now he’s alive, but he’s lacking his _sword hand_ and the most she did for keeping him alive was cleaning his shit up during the trip back and _he_ was the one saving her life or at least her maidenhead, _she_ couldn’t even find a way to free the both of them or — or _anything_ that someone who wants a knighthood should have.

Gods, she really did muck it up, hasn’t she, and she scrubs harder at her arm, _harder —_

“Not so hard, wench,” she hears Jaime Lannister say, “you’ll scrub the skin off.”

 _What_ —

She looks up immediately, the brush falling from her hands, and she sees him stand up in his stinking, soiled clothes outside the brush, with a guard accompanying him, and she immediately covers her breasts the moment she realizes they were on full display for the both of them to see. Hells, _why_ is he here, why is he looking at her, _why_ —

“What are you doing here?” She asks, maybe a bit harsher than she had meant to.

“Lord Bolton insists I sup with him, but he neglected to invite my fleas,” he replies, his voice taking a dark tone. Oh, so they are both invited to that dinner.

He looks at the guard. “Help me out of these stinking rags.”

The guard doesn’t seem too eager to do it, but he unlaces his breeches enough that then they can fall down on the ground. He undresses, and Brienne tries to avert her eyes, but it’s no good, and — she’s seen him naked countless times by now, what makes _this_ different?

 _That he was barely conscious before, and you certainly weren’t both naked, maybe_ , a voice tells her, and — gods, he’s thinner and obviously malnourished and scarred all over, but she can’t help thinking that he’s still so handsome it almost seems to shine through all that happened to him in the last few years.

 _He looks like half a corpse and half a god_ , she thinks as the dim light of the bathhouse hits the gold of his newly growing hair.

“Now leave us,” Jaime Lannister tells the guard. “My lady of Tarth doesn’t want the likes of you scum gaping at her teats.”

She knows she’s just gone full red in the face. A part of her is somewhat glad he’s back to his insufferable japes, and she hates that he’s just made one about one part of her she always, _always_ felt was lacking, but at least it means he’ll live. He raises his stump at the woman who went with her. “You too. Wait without. There’s only the one door, and the wench is too big to try and shinny up a chimney.”

At least the woman goes, and Brienne tries to not groan out loud — she’s not in the mood for japes about her size, her breasts and _whatever else_ , she really isn’t, not when he should at least be thankful she didn’t, well, _let him starve himself_ on the way, to say one. Fine, she mucked things up, but — she _did_ try to help, at some point, and she had thought that maybe this would mean an end to it.

As if.

As if she hasn’t had to deal with _that_ specific type of shit all her life.

She hopes he’ll go to another tub and leave her alone.

She’s not at all surprised that he slowly moves inside _her_ tub.

Of course he does.

“There are other tubs,” she tells him, trying to shrink away from him even if he’s far enough that they aren’t touching.

“This one suits me well enough.” Of course he _doesn’t_ catch the drift, and submerges himself in the water, up to his chin, except for his right arm. She can imagine that _he_ would want that right now. If she was filthy, she can’t imagine how _he_ is feeling. Still, the feeling of being naked with another person in the same tub is too much, and she shrinks away further. He shakes his head. “Have no fear, wench. Your thighs are purple and green, and I’m not interested in what you’ve got between them,” he says, moving his right arm over the rim so the linen doesn’t get wet.

“If I faint, pull me out. No Lannister has ever drowned in his bath and I don’t mean to be the first.”

She wonders _how_ he can manage to dole out those fairly terrible japes even in his current situation. She huffs. “Why should I care how you die?”

“You swore a solemn vow.” He smiles as she feels blood rush up to her face. She did, of course she did, and she knows that she would catch him if he did faint. Still, this attitude is irking on her nerves and she says nothing as she turns her back to him. “Still the shy maiden? What is it that you think I haven’t seen?”

 _I’ve seen more of you that you’ve seen of me_ , she doesn’t tell him, resigning herself to losing her brush when he finds it on the tub’s pavement and starts trying to use it. She doesn’t look at the scene — if he wants help, he can damn well ask and she’s not going to play along.

A part of her tells her to stop being this childish and uphold her vow, but — she can’t face him right now. She _can’t_. Not when he wouldn’t risk fainting in the tub if she just had been a bit more careful —

“Does the sight of my stump distress you so?” He finally asks.

 _No_ , she wants to say. _I don’t want to look at it because you wouldn’t have it if I hadn’t let you get the better of me and if I hadn’t fallen for your ruse and if I had disarmed you at once. It’s my failure, too._

Then he speaks again. “You ought to be pleased,” he goes on. "I’ve lost the hand I killed the king with. The hand that flung the Stark boy from that tower. The hand I’d slide between my sister’s thighs to make her wet.” She flinches as he thrusts the stump at her, almost touching her face. “No wonder Renly died, with you guarding him.”

She doesn’t know _what_ goes over her the moment he says it — it might be that she hasn’t still come to terms with it, nor with the fact that Renly’s dead and she couldn’t grieve him, it might be that it was her first failure and she’ll never be over it, it might be that not only it was her failure but now people think _she_ killed him when she would never, she _could_ never, not Renly, not the only man who ever was _decent_ to her, but the moment he says it she loses every shred of modesty she had before, and she stands up at once, turning at him with a glare that she hopes says, _how could you ask, is this how you want to take revenge on me?_ , not caring a whim that she’s naked and he can see _all_ of her, from breasts to the hair covering her crotch or the rest of her body, and for a moment his face takes a weird grimace, as if he’s _surprised_ , and what should he be surprised about, but a moment later he looks at his side, not at her nakedness, and he breathes out tiredly.

“That was unworthy,” he says under his breath. Wait, is he —

“I’m a maimed man, and bitter. Forgive me, wench. You protected me as well as any man could have, and better than most.”

Is he _apologizing_? She doesn’t — she can’t — she reaches for a towel on the ground next to the tub, wrapping it around her breasts before looking back at him. “Do you mock me?” She asks, figuring that he _is_. What a jape. She hasn’t _protected him_ , she has _failed her mission_ —

“Are you as thick as a castle wall?” He asks, and wait. He sounds _angry._ As if he had expected her to accept. As if he _meant it_ — “That was an apology. I am tired of fighting with you. What say we make a truce?”

He wants — he wants a _truce_ now? She scoffs, a part of her she doesn’t particularly like coming up to the surface.

“Truces are built on trust. Would you have me trust—”

“The Kingslayer, yes. The oathbreaker who murdered poor sad Aerys Targaryen.” He snorts, not knowing that she was _not_ going to say that rather than, _someone who seems to never tell the truth._

He snorts. It’s not amused. “It’s not Aerys I rue, it’s Robert. ‘I hear they’ve named you Kingslayer,’ he said to me at his coronation feast. ‘Just don’t think to make it a habit.’ And he laughed. Why is it that no one names Robert oathbreaker? He tore the realm apart, yet I am the one with shit for honor.” He seems very, very displeased at that. Brienne scoffs, getting out of the tub, letting water wash off her.

“Robert did all he did for love.”

“Robert did all he did for pride, a cunt, and a pretty face.” He makes a pained face as he says it.

“He rode to save the realm,” Brienne insists, because _that_ is what he did. Everyone knows that.

“Did you know that my brother set the Blackwater Rush afire? Wildfire will burn on water. Aerys would have bathed in it if he’d dared. The Targaryens were all mad for fire.” He says, his voice suddenly changing. It sounds — different. As if he’s somehow getting lost in some kind of memory. He shudders as he says it. “Soiled my white cloak…” he goes on, and now he sounds — sad? What is he on about?

“… I wore my gold armor that day, but…”

“Gold armor?” She presses, and — wait. _Wait_.

She had wondered if he was telling the whole truth about Aerys Targaryen, back on the road. She also had never thought he would ever speak to _her_ of everyone about it.

But — now it seems like he is?

He barely even looks at her.

“After dancing griffins lost the Battle of the Bells, Aerys exiled him.” _Dancing griffins —_ oh. Jon Connington. A man that from the stories sounded vasty better than his nephew, or so she’s heard. “He had finally realized that Robert was no mere outlaw lord to be crushed at whim, but the greatest threat House Targaryen had faced since Daemon Blackfyre. The king reminded Lewyn Martell gracelessly that he held Elia and sent him to take command of the ten thousand Dornishmen coming up the kingsroad. Jon Darry and Barristan Selmy rode to Stoney Sept to rally what they could of griffins’ men, and Prince Rhaegar returned from the south and persuaded his father to swallow his pride and summon my father. But no raven returned from Casterly Rock, and that made the king even more afraid. He saw traitors everywhere, and Varys was always there to point out any he might have missed.” All right. That’s nothing she hadn’t heard before, but the way he’s speaking about how Aerys dismissed the rest of the Kingsguard reeks resentment, somehow. What it is that he’s _not_ telling? What it is that he knows that _others_ might not?

“So His Grace commanded his alchemists to place caches of wildfire all over King’s Landing. Beneath Baelor’s Sept and the hovels of Flea Bottom, under stables and storehouses, at all seven gates, even in the cellars of the Red Keep itself.”

 _Gods._ She doesn’t want to believe that it’s true. She doesn’t want to. But — fine. It does seem to line up with what people say and the history books say about the Mad King. It _does_. But —

“Everything was done in the utmost secrecy by a handful of master pyromancers. They did not even trust their own acolytes to help. The queen’s eyes had been closed for years, and Rhaegar was busy marshaling an army. But Aerys’s new mace-and-dagger Hand was not utterly stupid, and with Rossart, Belis, and Garigus coming and going night and day, he became suspicious. Chelsted, that was his name, Lord Chelsted.” He’s barely even looking at her now, and she feels like — it sounds like he has _never_ told anyone any of this, and like the moment he opened the door, it’s pouring out of him, crashing out the way sea waves would crush against Tarth’s rocks during storms when she was a child. “I’d thought the man craven,” Lannister goes on, “but the day he confronted Aerys he found some courage somewhere. He did all he could to dissuade him. He reasoned, he jested, he threatened, and finally he begged. When that failed he took off his chain of office and flung it down on the floor. Aerys burnt him alive for that, and hung his chain about the neck of Rossart, his favorite pyromancer. The man who had cooked Lord Rickard Stark in his own armor. And all the time, I stood by the foot of the Iron Throne in my white plate, still as a corpse, guarding my liege and all his sweet secrets.”

Brienne’s stomach contorts on itself — she knows he killed his king, she knows he forsook his vows, she knows, she _knows_ , but the way he’s talking, the way contempt is falling from his voice, how pained the tone is when he said _still as a corpse_ , she can’t help thinking that maybe, _maybe_ whatever the end of this story is, it might explain _why_ she can’t figure him out properly. Maybe there’s a reason why a man who _could_ do such heinous things could also do the most selfless thing

( _for her_ )

that she’s ever witnessed in her entire life for good or bad, maybe it will make her understand what it is about him that has gotten under her skin and isn’t going to leave her be or keep on letting her assume that the only thing she might feel for him should be loathing.

Because she doesn’t loathe him now. As much as she wishes she did, she doesn’t. Not at all.

“My Sworn Brothers were all away, you see, but Aerys liked to keep me close. I was my father’s son, so he did not trust me. He wanted me where Varys could watch me, day and night. So I heard it all.”

 _He was seventeen_ , she thinks as she doesn’t miss how he sounds resentful of it. Gods, she’s not so much older than that. _Could I have done it in his place_? She doesn’t know. She likes to think she would have. But — Renly was no Aerys now, was he?

“Rhaegar met Robert on the Trident, and you know what happened there. When the word reached court, Aerys packed the queen off to Dragonstone with Prince Viserys. Princess Elia would have gone as well, but he forbade it. Somehow he had gotten it in his head that Prince Lewyn must have betrayed Rhaegar on the Trident, but he thought he could keep Dorne loyal so long as he kept Elia and Aegon by his side. _The traitors want my city,_ I heard him tell Rossart, b _ut I’ll give them naught but ashes. Let Robert be king over charred bones and cooked meat._ ”

 _No_ , she thinks. No, he can’t be saying that — he can’t be saying that Aerys —

 _“_ The Targaryens never bury their dead, they burn them. Aerys meant to have the greatest funeral pyre of them all. Though if truth be told, I do not believe he truly expected to die. Like Aerion Brightfire before him, Aerys thought the fire would transform him… that he would rise again, reborn as a dragon, and turn all his enemies to ash.”

Gods. _Gods_. She thinks she sees where this is heading. If Aerys wanted Robert to be king over _charred bones and cooked meat_ and _thought the fire would transform him_ —

“Ned Stark was racing south with Robert’s van,” Lannister goes on, shaking his head slightly, this eyes still closed, “but my father’s forces reached the city first. Pycelle convinced the king that his Warden of the West had come to defend him, so he opened the gates. The one time he should have heeded Varys, and he ignored him.” He snorts, shaking his head again, but now it feels like he’s never going to stop talking, and so she doesn’t dare tell him different, but meanwhile she’s gone back down inside the tub, towel forgotten, her lips parted.

“My father had held back from the war, brooding on all the wrongs Aerys had done him and determined that House Lannister should be on the winning side. The Trident decided him. It fell to me to hold the Red Keep, but I knew we were lost.”

 _Gods_ , she thinks, _who leaves the seventeen-year old kingsguard in charge of a siege_? She doesn’t ask.

“I sent to Aerys asking his leave to make terms. My man came back with a royal command. ‘Bring me your father’s head, if you are no traitor.’ Aerys would have no yielding. Lord Rossart was with him, my messenger said. I knew what that meant. When I came on Rossart, he was dressed as a common man-at-arms, hurrying to a postern gate. I slew him first. Then I slew Aerys, before he could find someone else to carry his message to the pyromancers.”

Oh.

Gods.

She was right.

She was right, and _that_ was what he was aiming at, and if he hadn’t done it Aerys would have _set the city on fire_ , and —

“Days later, I hunted down the others and slew them as well. Belis offered me gold, and Garigus wept for mercy. Well, a sword’s more merciful than fire, but I don’t think Garigus much appreciated the kindness I showed him.”

He opens his eyes as Brienne notices that the water isn’t so hot anymore. He opens them on the stump of his right hand, though, and she can see the expression of disgust on his face. He looks up at her and at the way she’s clutching at her towel, trying to digest that story, because she can’t make sense of it. If it’s true, _why_ didn’t he tell? _Why?_ He would have been called a hero. He wouldn’t have tarnished his honor as such. Gods, _he saved an entire city_ —

“Has my tale turned you speechless? Come, curse me or kiss me or call me a liar. Something.” He spits then, hopefully wanting a reply, and she’s just too riled up by it to even mind that he implied she should _kiss him_.

“If this is true, how is it no one knows?” She asks, her voice shaking, but she knows it’s true. She knows. That wasn’t the voice of a liar. That wasn’t the voice of someone who’s trying to outwit her or anything of the kind. She’d know. It was obvious that he only was sincere.

“The knights of the Kingsguard are sworn to keep the king’s secrets. Would you have me break my oath?” He laughs, and the sound of it makes her stomach contort all over again. Of course. _Of course._ What did he say when Lady Catelyn got him drunk in Riverrun? That oaths just pile on top of each other and you cannot know or choose which ones you want to keep because they will always be in conflict?

Gods, now it adds up, doesn’t it?

“Do you think the noble Lord of Winterfell wanted to hear my feeble explanations? Such an honorable man. He only had to look at me to judge me guilty.” And then his voice turns angry, for the first time since he started speaking, because until now he merely sounded melancholic, at least until the very end, and his eyes are such a bright, feverish green it almost hurts to look at them. She doesn’t even notice his nakedness now, not when his face is contorted in a grimace of pain that makes her throat close up at once.

“By what right does the wolf judge the lion? By what right?” He shouts, and now he sounds bitter, and resentful, as if he has packed fifteen years of harboring that question inside him and turning it on each side, trying to find an answer and not getting it, not daring having asked, but now he just spat it out like some kind of ugly truth that no one ever wanted to listen to and no one ever asked him in the first place, and now it’s all for her to see and hear, but she can’t answer because a moment later his legs falter, and his eyes close, and he shudders —

 _The steam_ , she thinks. He hasn’t eaten properly in days, he hasn’t _drank_ properly in days, he just stepped inside a steamy bath, _of course_ , he must be fainting, and she immediately jumps to her feet, losing the towel, but she can’t care less right now.

She couldn’t do this for him on the road, she thinks irrationally, but she will _now_ , and so she catches him before he can faint inside the water, his head ending up against her upper arm, the other wrapped around his waist. She tries to not manhandle him too strongly — he’s been hurt already too much, a part of her says, and not just during their journey now, not with what she _knows_ , and so she helps him out of the tub, not forcing him, and he looks about to faint —

“Guards!” She calls, not knowing what else to do. She considers saying his name, but she has a feeling they wouldn’t answer. “The Kingslayer!” She shouts as he passes out inside her arms, and she hates herself for having used that title out loud.

She lowers him to the floor, as gently as she can. _I won’t. Not again_ , she resolves.

Not after what she’s just heard, she thinks, moving damp strands of hair from his eyes — it _is_ longer now — and wishing he would just open them already. Gods. _Gods,_ he can’t die. Not now.

——

By the time he opens his eyes again, thankfully not long later, both the guards and the maester, Qyburn, have shown up — she was getting so damned worried that she’s barely even caring that _all_ of them are seeing her naked, breasts and all. He does when Qyburn tells them his diagnosis, not that Brienne couldn’t have guessed it herself — still, could have been worse, she figures.

“The heat of the tubs will do it,” Qyburn says as Jaime opens his eyes. “There’s still poison in his blood as well, and he’s malnourished. What have you been feeding him?”

“Worms and piss and grey vomit,” Jaime croaks, and Brienne doesn’t correct him. That _was_ what they fed him, anyhow.

“Hardbread and water and oat porridge,” the guard says, and Brienne wants to laugh. Maybe _now_ they might have. Certainly not on the road. “He don’t hardly eat it, though. What should we do with him?”

“Scrub him and dress him and carry him to Kingspyre, if need be,” Qyburn says, not looking too pleased with the guard. “Lord Bolton insists he will sup with him tonight. The time is growing short.”

The guard makes a face that suggests he’s not really up for the task, but the moment Brienne thinks about any of these men doing such a thing after what she’s heard and after how he’s been treated on the road —

No.

“Bring me clean garb for him,” she says at once, “I’ll see that he’s washed and dressed.” She’s done it for weeks by now, she sure as the seven hells will do it _now_ that she can finally see to it properly and she will know that no one else actually made the situation any worse than it already is.

She goes to retrieve her blasted towel and another brush while they sit Jaime on one of the stone benches, and then they thankfully leave them alone. He goes silent as she kneels by his feet and proceeds to scrub dead skin starting from his legs and going upward — she tries to be efficient without actually scrubbing him raw, but honestly, seeing him _not_ covered in muck and waste is enough to make her breathe in relief. When he moves up to his hips and chest, she glances at him, but he’s looking to the side, as if he’s lost in thought. She kind of wants to talk about what he just said, but — she can’t. Not now. Not when others can hear. So she moves on to work on his arms, and when she finally reaches the inflamed right wrist, she changes the bandaging with a clean one Qyburn left on the side.

By the time she’s done, the guards have come back with a razor and hand it to her — then again, it’s not like she could use it to hasten their escape in these conditions, couldn’t she? She shakes her head and moves her hand to Jaime’s neck, noticing how his throat works up and down the moment she tilts his chin up so she can trim the dead and brittle hairs of his beard. It’s not as if she’s never seen her father do it, or the men in Renly’s camp — she _knows_ how to work a blade.

What surprises her is that he says absolutely nothing nor shows a moment of resentment or anything of the kind when _she_ puts it to his throat.

What did he say? _You protected me as well as any man could be and better than most_? She starts trimming it carefully, dead brittle hair falling on the ground as she sweeps it away with her fingers. Maybe most men wouldn’t be here doing _this_ , she thinks. Maybe most men wouldn’t have agreed to quite literally tend to someone else they were supposed to despise. Maybe most men wouldn’t be here feeling hot rage they never knew they _could_ feel on behalf of someone they thought they should loathe being looked after by complete strangers who haven’t ridden tied to him with his rotting hand slapping their chest. She doesn’t know. Most _men_ surely haven’t heard that confession of his in the tub, and she still can’t believe no one even bothered to ask him why.

Same as _she_ did, though, didn’t she?

She doesn’t let her hand falter as she stands up and moves the razor to his left cheek, keeping only the healthy hair on his face, same as the right side — it’s paler gold than the hair growing on his head now, but at least it doesn’t look _dead_.

(Same as his eyes had when he said he _was_ going to let himself waste away.)

She knows she doesn’t need to run her fingers across his face thrice in order to get rid of the remaining hair, but she does because she can’t _say_ anything and it’s the only comforting gesture she can think of doing in lack of anything else. He sighs and leans into it slightly, even if he says nothing, but his eyes look slightly more focused. He still doesn’t seem to be able to stand, though.

Before she can ask him how he’s feeling, Qyburn comes back with new clothes. For Jaime, he has roughspun smallclothes, black woolen breeches, a green tunic and a leather jerkin that laces from the front. For her there’s a linen undertunic, which would be fine… if not for the hideous pink gown that comes with it. She can see just from looking at it that she’ll look hideous in it, and she knows pink makes her look even worse than she usually does, but — never mind.

She waves away Qyburn’s excuses about not being larger garments than that.

“Catch your breath, ser,” she tells Jaime. “I will help you with yours when I’m changed.”

He nods, looking more alert, and she shrugs and goes away with the towel, putting on the damned tunic and gown — it’s not as if both Jaime and Qyburn _haven’t_ seen her naked already, so what does she care? The gown fits her horribly and doesn’t hide all the bruising on her legs and arms.

Well, she’ll live. She lifts him up enough to put the smallclothes on him and then the breeches, glaring at Qyburn when he tries to offer help — she can handle this herself and she doesn’t want him near Jaime more than strictly necessary. By then, Jaime’s well enough to lean forward and hold out his arms so she can put the tunic on himself and then the jerkin. She laces it swiftly, and she doesn’t tell him he looks miles better than before when she’s done. He’d probably know.

Then Qyburn produces a flask and hands it over. She snatches it, sniffing the content first. She smells nothing uncouth, so she hands it back to Qyburn who gives it to Jaime, who makes no motion to drink it. Qyburn tells him that he should. Jaime doesn’t look too convinced.

“What is it?” Jaime asks.

“Licorice steeped in vinegar, with honey and cloves.” Right. What she smelled before. “It will give you some strength and clear your head.

“Bring me the potion that grows new hands, that’s the one I want.”

On one side, Brienne is almost relieved that it sounded _petty_. Same as he did on the road, before. Still, it won’t do him nothing good to refuse it like a sick child who thinks medicine tastes foul and won’t help, and as much as she doesn’t trust Qyburn, _that_ mixture would do the trick.

“Drink it,” she tells him seriously, in the same tone she used when she told him to take revenge instead of letting himself waste, his eyes meeting hers.

She expect another witty retort, since he’s obviously in the mood for arguing.

Instead, he just stares at her for one moment, then drinks it. He also makes a face as he does before he closes his eyes and says he’ll need a bit before he can stand, but that’s it. Brienne tries to not give out that she’s surprised he actually did what she said without blinking, but then she drops sitting down next to him, intending to wait until he’s ready.

It’s some half an hour before he breathes in, stands and says he’s well enough to join Lord Bolton. A guard opens the door and he immediately falters — right. The air outside is colder, much colder.

“M’lord will be looking for him now,” the guard says. “Her, too. Do I need to carry him?”

She can see the moment his eyes widen in terror for one split moment, probably thinking of Rorge or Urswyck or worse Shagwell throwing him around like a sack of potatoes at best, and she’s about to say that at most _she_ is going to carry him and no one other, but then he stands back up straight.

“I can still walk,” he says, and for a moment Brienne can’t help thinking that she admires how steady his voice sounded in spite of everything. “Brienne, give me your arm.”

She does at once — rather than just slipping his right through it, he clutches at it with his left hand as well, and they take a few steps.

It’s apparently working, and she can feel how his fingers grasp feverishly at her skin, but the determined way he looks forward makes that spark of admiration burn inside her again.

Gods, there is a man who has been humiliated beyond decency, forcibly lost his sword hand when _that_ was what he was famous for, who has saved half a million people and only suffered scorn for years for it, who has never told the truth because _he kept an oath_ when everyone else thought him incapable and because no one else thought of _asking_ and he was most likely too proud to beg them for it, who obviously at ten and seven had seen more than anyone that age should ever have (even _her_ ), who has risked his life to spare her maidenhead when men she had thought way better of in the beginning wouldn’t have dreamed of it and only gained more suffering and humiliation for it… and he still will rather face Bolton on his feet than give up, and this when he was about to let himself die in the middle of the road.

She lets him clutch.

She can handle it, same as she _would_ have if they had let her on the road.

And whatever looms ahead, she’s not going to try to bring him back to King’s Landing safely just because she swore Lady Catelyn she would. She will because she’s seen that he’s not what he seems, and he deserves a respite from everything that’s happened to him.

Maybe she will find the courage to tell him that she thinks that what he did in the Rebellion, knowing the truth of it, might be the bravest thing she’s ever heard of.

For now, she helps him move forward. It’s honestly the least she can do, after all.

 

 

End.

**Author's Note:**

> Extra note: I've had a RL kick in the backside lately which means that I'm behind with the last seven-ish fics or so, which means that I might take a few pauses in between posting the rest of the spite stuff - I'm obviously never going to be finished in time for the premiere but I hope it's in time for episode two. /o\


End file.
